Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO THE LEANAN SIDHE (FAIRY MUSE), by THOMAS BOYD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO THE LEANAN SIDHE (FAIRY MUSE), by                    
First Line: Where is thy lovely perilous abode?
Last Line: And fares into the night.
Subject(s): Fairies; Elves


Where is thy lovely perilous abode?
In what strange phantom-land
Glimmer the fairy turrets whereto rode
The ill-starred poet band?

Say, in the Isle of Youth hast thou thy home,
The sweetest singer there,
Stealing on winged steed across the foam
Athrough the moonlit air?

And by the gloomy peaks of Erigal,
Haunted by storm and cloud,
Wing past, and to thy lover there let fall
His singing robe and shroud?

Or, where the mists of bluebell float beneath
The red stems of the pine,
And sunbeams strike thro' shadow, dost thou breathe
The word that makes him thine?

Or, is thy palace entered thro' some cliff
When radiant tides are full,
And round thy lover's wandering, starlit skiff
Coil in luxurious lull?

And would he, entering on the brimming flood,
See caverns vast in height,
And diamond columns, crowned with leaf and bud,
Glow in long lanes of light.

And there, the pearl of that great glittering shell,
Trembling, behold thee lone,
Now weaving in slow dance an awful spell,
Now still upon thy throne?

Thy beauty! ah, the eyes that pierce him thro'
Then melt as in a dream;
The voice that sings the mysteries of the blue
And all that Be and Seem!

Thy lovely motions answering to the rhyme
That ancient Nature sings,
That keeps the stars in cadence for all time,
And echoes thro' all things!

Whether he sees thee thus, or in his dreams,
Thy light makes all lights dim;
An aching solitude from henceforth seems
The world of men to him.

Thy luring song, above the sensuous roar,
He follows with delight,
Shutting behind him Life's last gloomy door,
And fares into the Night.





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